Many restaurants rely on waiters (or “servers” at times herein) to deliver food to guests promptly and safely. In such scenarios, waiters often hand-carry each dish to the table and serve the dishes to the appropriate guest. This time-honored tradition is gratifying to guests and a standard in the industry. However, even the most skilled waiter can only carry a limited number of dishes at any one time. Several reasons for this limitation exist. For example, the size of the waiter's arms and hands may limit the size of dishes that the waiter can manipulate, lift or steady against the waiter's person. Also, the restaurant's dining room could be filled with obstacles such as chairs, footstools, persons, children, or pets and, therefore, a waiter must have the ability to move the waiter's arms as needed to maintain his or her balance. Furthermore, the restaurant may proscribe certain carrying practices so as to prohibit the waiter from overburdening her or himself in the performance of her or his duties, for liability or guest experience purposes.
For the above reasons, and others, a device is needed that makes it easy for a waiter to carry a variety of food and beverage service items such as plates and bowls of all sizes, serving platters, ice buckets for champagne, sizzling hot skillets, covered dishes, and so forth (collectively, “food service items”). Preferably, in at least one embodiment, such a device may be shoulder-mounted for stability and ease of use purposes. Such a device could also be used by any person wishing to carry any item, in addition to or instead of food service items.
Some attempts at meeting this need have been made. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 953,007, incorporated by reference herein in its entirety, discloses a hand-held device for waiters that provides for a series of levels upon which a waiter may stack multiple plates and distribute them with the waiter's free hand. While this disclosure does provide for a vertically stacked food service item-carrying device, its hand-held design would weary the waiter unnecessarily.
Another attempt can be seen with respect to U.S. Pat. No. 7,000,799, incorporated by reference in its entirety herein, generally discloses a hand-held serving tray that servers could use to deliver food and beverages to tables. While this disclosure does provide for a body-mounted solution, via a thumb-hole and forearm-covering flat surface, it fails to provide for a tiered structure capable of supporting multiple large plates at once. Additionally, its thumb hole makes it necessary to provide servers with two such items: one for right-handed servers and one for left-handed servers.
Another attempt to meet this need can be found in the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 7,520,550, incorporated by reference in its entirety herein, which generally discloses a tiered plate-carrying device that mounts on a user's arm. While this disclosure does enable a user to deliver multiple large plates in one trip, it also suffers from a design that relies on a user's arm strength to carry the potentially heavy plates, rather than the shoulder's larger muscle groups.
Still, none of these in existence comprise beneficial characteristics described in the following disclosure. Thus, there remains a need for a new shoulder-mounted device for carrying food-service items.